DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant: This program will provide predoctoral and postdoctoral training to produce future independent investigators with multidisciplinary experiences that span several basic mission areas of the NHLBI (sleep and hypoxic response, cardiopulmonary and cardio-renal diseases, hypertension, and inflammation/infection), but is rooted in rigorous biostatistical, epidemiologic, genetic/genomic and computational approaches to problem solving. After providing only postdoctoral training for the first fifteen years, the program was expanded in 1999 to provide both predoctoral and postdoctoral training and will continue to provide both types of training. Predoctoral training will be for the Ph.D. degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics through the Division of Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology, with the trainees gaining general expertise in population sciences, particularly in solving problems related to omics in large samples through the development of innovative modeling strategies. This will be done with the help of a mentoring committee that will ensure the student receives sound training in statistical genetics as well as exposure to collaborations with the broader Case Community in other departments and Centers of Excellence that have relevant clinical and basic science expertise. The most important mode of training for postdoctoral students will be that of conducting collaborative research with faculty: methodological research (using mathematical derivations or computer simulations) and/or substantive research by means of data analysis. It is anticipated that half the postdoctoral students will already have had training in a cardiopulmonary area but, in order to gain the necessary epidemiological/statistical expertise, will need to formally register for the MS degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. All trainees, both pre- and post-doctoral, will attend regularly scheduled seminars and specific lecture and/or reading courses, including mandatory lectures in bioethics. Particular features of the program will be; computational laboratory cross-training, short-term training stints in basic science laboratories, interaction with the Medical Scientist Training Program, and the presence of internationally known biostatisticians/geneticists/genetic epidemiologists as visitors, for periods of one to several days, giving seminars and short courses in their particular fields of specialty and talking to the trainees about their research projects.